Quake just shakes out the logical

Tuesday evening, I was at home cooking stir fry (about the only thing I know how to cook) when, yikes, everyone else in New England felt an earthquake, except me.

We don’t feel a lot of earthquakes around here, but it is highly likely that some day in the next 300,000 or so years, we will get hit with the big one and life as we know it will end.

Or at least that is one scenario. The point is, earthquakes around here are rare. Locally in recent years there have been only a handful of earthquakes with magnitude greater than what is caused when people dance the Electric Slide at weddings. The second point is if there is an earthquake, I, a trained journalist, should be allowed to experience it.

No. No. No. This is not sour grapes, but I have not been happy since I received a call from a family member in Shutesbury who told me his home rattled, shook and did the Electric Slide for a few seconds. Realizing nothing like that happened at my house, I immediately went to my primary source of information, Facebook, to find out if there was an earthquake. Apparently there was, someplace in Maine no one has ever heard of, and it was felt by most of my friends and family in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.

But not everyone. Friends living near me, and in several communities that have no direct connection to where I live, said they also did not feel the quake. In one case a friend felt it, but his wife, standing six feet away, did not.

There is no logical explanation to why some felt it and others did not. I even checked to see if the others who did not feel the quake were also cooking stir fry. They were not. I also wondered if it had something to do with economic status; well, maybe they were all members of the 99 percent, but so were all the people who told me they felt it. Some of the people who did not feel the quake live on hills, others in valleys. Some have old homes and others have new homes. There is no good pattern. I wish I could find one.

Curious, obsessed and aggravated, I pulled out my binders full of earthquake information hoping to find an explanation. There was no explanation. There was a lot of information about old faults that were active in ancient times, recent quakes, most of which were magnitude-3.0 or wimpier, and thoughts on what terrible things could happen someday, possibly tomorrow, possibly in thousands of years.

I am not happy. In these days where social media, rather than real life, defines who and what we are (just kidding LOL follow me on Twitter @georgebarnestg, please, I need the attention), experiencing an earthquake is a perfect opportunity to let everyone know you are out there in nature, living it.

“Big shakin’ here. Is the world coming to an end?” would have been my Facebook status if I had felt the earthquake. Instead, when I heard about the quake, I went to Facebook, like a lost sheep for a way home, pathetically asking, “Did anyone feel an earthquake? How did it feel? Was it good for you?”

But what I really want to know is why did so many people feel a magnitude-4.0 to 4.6 earthquake and I was oblivious to the biggest event that night other than the presidential debate, which I believe registered magnitude-4.7? I have a few theories and maybe others can offer their own.

The first is that the U.S. Geological Survey and the many excited people on Facebook were wrong. There was no earthquake. It was The Rapture and we who were not affected are the people who will be taken up to a better place. It could also be that I am less sensitive than others, but who would believe a journalist is not sensitive. It could also be that earthquakes are avoiding me because they find it amusing.